Ever since the Government announced the controversial non-resident Indian (NRI) film import scheme, a steady stream of cheap soft-porn films have entered - and virtually taken over - the Indian film market.

advertisement

Sreedhar Pillai

July 15, 1987

ISSUE DATE: July 15, 1987

UPDATED: January 3, 2014 16:31 IST

Stills from Night Games

Bhavana, a deluxe film theatre at Kunnamkulam in Kerala, is slowly tilling up for the night show of the English film Gwendoline. Lungi-clad men whisper to the booking clerk: "Vallathum oundo" (Is there anything in the film)? The clerk mutters "Ishtampole sex ounde" (There's plenty of sex). The word quickly spreads and the theatre is full in minutes.

For six rupees there is a whole new world available to the Indian film-goer today: the world of uninhibited fantasy and sex. Ever since the Government announced the controversial non-resident Indian (NRI) film import scheme, a steady stream of cheap soft-porn films have entered - and virtually taken over - the Indian film market.

What is shown in Bhavana theatre for the next 95 minutes is much more than what the censors saw in the same film. There is nudity and erotica enough to keep the sex-starved audience satiated for a week. Further north, in Bombay's New Empire theatre - which once prided itself on screening classics like Ten Commandments - the queues are long, despite the sweltering heat, for another soft porn film Final Justice. Balcony tickets are being sold in the black market for Rs 25 each.

The Lonely Lady: erotica excess

Outside, theatre-goers ogle stills from the film in the display windows although polite brown paper has been pasted over in places with the curt message: "Censored by police". Final Justice is a spaghetti western littered with dead bodies and topless women, with its highlight being a long scene on love-making under a shower.

The NRI scheme which is bombing viewers with sex was actually conceived as a project to bring valuable foreign exchange into the country. Under the scheme, initiated in October 1984, a nonresident Indian can import a foreign feature film into India by paying a $15,000 (Rs 1.9 lakh) canalisation fee to the Government-owned National Film Development Corporation (NEDC). The scheme took off like wildfire, bringing a glut of sex and violence into India despite two censorship check posts set up by the NFDC and the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). So dubious is the quality of the films offered that by June 1, out of the 479 titles submitted for approval, only 246 had been cleared, while 208 had been rejected outright and another 25 are still awaiting a decision by the board.

censored ones (above): selling sex

The films that have found their way in, however, are creating havoc with the Indian film industry, especially in the south. Said Ramraj Nahta, president of the All India Film Producers Council: "NRI films have damaged to a great extent the Hindi film market, and destroyed the regional films in the south."

Trade figures show that there has in fact been a 40 per cent fall in box-office collections on regional films. Said Shaji George of Central Pictures, the oldest distribution concern in Kerala: "Today even theatres in villages want to screen The Lonely Lady, Daughter of the Jungle, Night Games and other sex movies." M. Mani of Aroma Films switched to distributing soft porn films after three of his big-budget Malayalam productions flopped.

Even in Madras city, which is presided over by film deity M.G. Ramachandran, more and more theatres are succumbing to the financial charms of soft porn. Despite stringent laws passed by the MGR Government for compulsory screening of Tamil films, last week as many as 26 out of the 70-odd theatres in the city were screening NRI imports. As the manager of a Madras theatre put it: "NRI films mean all shows full, while an average Tamil film runs into deficit in the second week itself."

Film posters

In what the film trade calls B and C class stations also, theatre owners prefer NRI films because they can hold as many as six full-house screenings a day because of the shorter playing time. Said Shaji: "On an average about 110 Tamil or Malayalam films are released a year, while last year alone more than 100 NRI films have been released. Where do you get playing time for regional movies which don't have this sex and violence?"

Even the brazenly pornographic Malayalam films that made a name for themselves a few years ago have been unable to match Hollywood's erotica. K.S. Gopalakrishnan, the high priest of Malayalam soft porn, is out of work while former "blue movie" star Ratheesh is desperately scouting for roles in mainstream Malayalam films.

The distributors are raking in the shekels. Many of them are openly flouting all censorship laws. The censors make cuts in what is presented to them for approval, and the distributors put the deleted portions right back into the films. Nearly 16 such cases have already been caught by the police, and many more go undetected. In Trivandrum's New Theatres, where The Lonely Lady was being screened, distributor M. Mani of Aroma Films did not like the lady being too lonely and interpolated all the nine censor cuts - running into 371 ft - back into the picture, with visuals suggesting oral sex, an elaborate rape scene, a five-minute copulation scene and hints of lesbianism. Said Ranganathan, regional censor officer in Trivandrum: "Lonely Lady would make people believe that there is no censor board in the country. These NRI movies are giving me a torrid time as they are being shown in their original version all over the state."

Film posters

The Censor Board is powerless to check the flood. Policemen in Madras have been assigned to look after NRI films suspected of containing interpolated scenes. "In Madras we have issued a stern warning that the licences of cinema theatres exhibiting such interpolated movies would be cancelled," said the city's Police Commissioner W.I. Devaram. But there is little the policemen can do. "How is the local policeman to know what has been deleted by the censors?" asks Devaram. If anything, Devaram feels there is more interpolation of censored scenes in villages than in the cities.

For Hollywood India has inevitably become a more important market. Earlier American producers would sell their films for peanut amounts, often less than $3,000 (Rs 35,000). Today they are asking for a minimum of $50,000 (Rs 6.2 lakh) - and getting it. Two years ago, Adam and Eve, a C grade film was sold for $3,000. The sequel, Sins of Adam and Eve, went for $60,000. With prices climbing, Indian distributors now want even more violence and sex. Said G.B.S. Mani of Karthi Enterprises: "Our audiences only see NRI films if there is an overdose of sex and violence. My film King Solomon's Mines is an international hit but a failure in India because there are no 'hot' scenes."

The NRI films also owe their success to effective marketing. The importers of these films announce in trade papers that they have "red hot" movies with titillating scenes to sell. Usually a middleman who has nothing to do with the Him trade enters the scene, buys the original print and sells it territory-wise. The distributor in turn plays up the sex angle. The Gift, an NFDC film, did well only when a new set of posters was printed along with a new appendage to the title - The Woman in Bed, Lady Football posters had a huge, bosomy woman with the caption: "They are real and they also play well". And Only for Love in its advertisements put it quite plainly: "A super sexy love story - see it with someone you love for sex."

"Most movies imported under the NRI scheme are pure muck and it is an organized racket, as only sleazy and sensational movies have a market."Bikram Singh,chairman, Central Board of Film Certification

The boom in NRI films - three of the biggest importers are non-resident Indians Arun Kumar, Ravi Duggal and Preetpal Singh - has also shaken the Motion Picture Export Association of America (MPEAA), once the sole importer of foreign films into India, MPEAA brings in the giants - Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Columbia, MGM and others. Before the NRI invasion, it virtually blocked several theatres for its films. Now it has lost the theatres and its foothold in India. Moreover, while MPEAA brought in foreign films at its own leisurely pace, NRIs are bringing in brand new releases, fresh from the bedroom, as it were. Said an MPEAA spokesman: "NRI films have debased the audience taste. The public taste is so demoralised that any English film without breathtaking violence or crude sex fails to click."

Ironically enough, the smut glut is a gift from the Government. Bikram Singh, chairman of the CBFC confessed: "Most of the movies imported under the NRI scheme are pure muck and it has become an organised racket, as only sleazy and sensational movies have a market in the country." While NFDC has clear instructions from the Information & Broadcasting Ministry that imports should have aesthetic value, and provide cinematically good, clean entertainment, it has no control over the interpolation that is done after censorship. Other distributors are confused and upset over the fact that films like Gwendoline and The Lonely Lady make it into the market, while films of some merit like Class of 1984 and Missing in Action have been refused a censor certificate. Said a CBFC member: "The whole NRI scheme is confusing and full of paradoxes. Certain powerful NRI importers with the right connections have benefited."

"Whether you call them trash films or not, we have been able to get almost $ 3 million in foreign exchange from the NRI scheme."Malati Tambay Vaidya,managing director, National Film Development Corporation

Clearly, all the flak seems to be settling on NFDC, the central body that filters the films from Hollywood to the distributors. For good measure, two of its employees in Madras were suspended following charges that they had held back sex scenes from the censors and then sold them separately to the trade. Malati Tambay Vaidya, NFDC managing director, simply said: "The NRI scheme has made us everybody's favourite whipping boy. What people want to see and what we want people to see are totally different We have rejected as many as 208 films out of the 479 applications, which I believe is good quality control." Tambay Vaidya also added: "Whether you call them trash films or not, we have been able to get almost $3 million in foreign exchange from the NRI scheme. This will be forever invested in the country and not be repatriated."

Nevertheless, with all the hullabaloo that has been raised, (here are expectations in the film business that the entire scheme might be scrapped. But even if that happens, there are over a hundred films that have already been cleared for release - which will keep the forbidden fruit dangling in front of audiences for a good year or two.

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from